Today, while gardening in front of my building, this elderly neighbor of mine started chatting me up and we grew afraid together of the weeds that were clawing at the building’s foundation. Then I told her it was a relief that she initiated this lovely, anxiety-begetting conversation with me as I’d always thought she’d hated me, to which she replied that she’d just had a stroke when I’d first moved into the building and her face was permanently paralyzed which accounted for her lack of a greeting and also her speech impediment, mainly what she called “fricative simplification.” To cheer her, I said that consonants were over-rated… but she didn’t smile at that comment… but you see, I now knew she couldn’t smile, so I decided that she was pleased all the same. She then made me study her lack of expression while she said extremely disturbing things. I said “i see what you mean” because I felt she needed me to say that.
She invited me up to her apartment and offered me a Tom Collins. I asked her to say more disturbing things sans any expression and she did. I giggled when she said “A rat ate my face” and I heard her laugh consonantlessly, though I didn’t see it. When she took a beta blocker, I asked if I could score one and she gave me an entire outdated bottle of Propranolol and sent me on my way. I think I’m in love.
Photograph of my adorable husband, Spencer Bewley and me by virtuoso Luz Gallardo. If it’s not clear, there’s no firm connection between these images and the text preceding, except when there is…Contact me if this formula of text, then incommensurate egoistic image gets annoying…but don’t contact me trollishly, cause my cousin-in-law is the periodontist of an FBI agent, who can have you hung by your testicles in a meat locker in Sheepshead Bay if you troll me…even if you use a fake identity; he will follow your fake identity to its conclusion, and string you up by the fascia of your gonads if you troll me.
DINA SEIDEN 